Consumers are leaning heavily on home entertainment during COVID, and manufacturers are rapidly rolling out Next Gen TVs ( ATSC 3.0). The awareness campaign is big. Audience expectations are high. Pandemic delayed initial availability but 3.0 is available now. The timing is good. TVs are ready.
The ATSC 3.0 platform was designed to evolve over time, providing broadcasters five years to transition by 2022. When HDR and wide color gamut start popping off the screen consumers get addicted. The scoring for immersive TV is high, but still many consumers are content with the televisions they have. Fortunately, the ATSC 3.0 platform designed for the ability to upscale content using today’s codecs to 4K, and the more data that you give a TV the better the display is going to look. We can expect the next advancements in ATSC to provide higher frame rate for live content, as well as the first IP-based content delivered over internet that can be seamlessly combined with over the air content.
ATSC 3.0 Roll Out (Balderston, 2020)
At a time when consumers are heavily relying on the screens in their home, improving the experience as much as possible is responsibility of the industry. We have the pipe and the technology, now we need the content. According to Madeline Noland, President of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), expect the unlock to occur with a growth of non-traditional content and creator communities partnering to amplify the experience. Michael Davies of Fox Sports expects betting and free to play video gaming will accelerate the next gen content development, and the way consumers view concurrent content is going to improve. Rather than jerry-rigging adjacent mobile devices, with Next Gen TVs consumers can pull in multiple sources and frame them on a single pane of glass. Next Generation audio provides Volume Balancing between sources and Voice Plus which enhances the dialog, because apparently many people without hearing impairments have been enabling captions.
Reference:
CTA (2021) Next Generation Television in Focus, CES 2021
Balderston, M. (2020). ATSC 3.0 Deployments: Where and When Will NextGen TV be Available? TVTech.